Way too quiet around here lately, so I'll post about my latest adventure and hope that you will all do the same...

Last Saturday I woke up and found that the sun was shining. That has been pretty rare lately, so I decided I had to go out and play. Josh and I went to Yokohama (the second largest city in Japan) to visit Landmark Tower (the tallest building in Japan with the fastest elevator in Japan) and ride the largest Ferris wheel in the world. We ate in an “American” diner which served a somewhat decent hamburger – hamburgers here generally are more like meatloaf and are served with some kind of weird sauce on them. Then, we watched a guy on a really tall unicycle juggling an apple, a cleaver, and a flaming baton. It was pretty cool, but we were sad to have missed seeing him get up onto the unicycle because we couldn’t imagine how he did it. As we were leaving, we found a bookstore and it had a pretty big foreign section. I found a few things, one of which provided my adventure yesterday. (I did put pictures of that trip on my Flickr site, but never got around to blogging about the adventure – so you can go check those out.)

Day Walks Near Tokyo seemed like a bargain. It was in English and told about interesting places to visit. There are three levels of walks, they are all relatively close, there were detailed directions about how to get to the starting point on public transportation, and best of all, it seemed to tell about some of the signs along the trails and what they said (it drives me CRAZY not to be able to read the signs at the touristy places we visit). Since it was another bright, sunny day (my lesson plans are done and papers are graded – woohoo!!!), I decided I was going to pick one and go. Josh had put off his work so we had to do some math in the morning. That made for a later start than I had hoped, so I chose to take the walk closest to home.

The book promised “rugged coastline and sea views, Cape Tsurugi Lighthouse, caves, and seaweed cultivation.” It also said that it was an easy walk that could be done in about 3 hours. So after dropping Josh and my car off at the Auto Hobby Shop (he was going to change my oil and hoped to con some other people into paying him to do stuff for them), I walked to the train station. After about 20 minutes, I arrived at the Muira-kaigan stop. Leaving the train station, I saw some beautiful cherry trees in bloom.

My handy-dandy guide book told me exactly which bus to take and it was sitting there, waiting to whisk me away. I had never ridden a Japanese bus before but that was addressed in the book too…get on in the middle, take a little ticket thingy, listen carefully for your stop, get off in the front after paying for your fare. I got on, saw the machine that was supposed to give me a ticket, and couldn’t figure out how to make it spit one out. I stepped aside to watch what the lady behind me did, but she was no help because she just slid her bus pass through the machine. No one else got on, so I was out of luck. Ticketless, I found a seat and the bus took off.

After a short drive through town, we passed by what appeared to be an actual beach! People were out there with their dogs, playing Frisbee, throwing baseballs, and one crazy guy was out in the water windsurfing (it was about 50° F yesterday). My handy dandy book said that I should get off at Togari and walk along the road until I got to the next bus stop. That didn’t sound too interesting to me, so I decided to just stay on the bus until I got to the next stop and then continue from there. That’s where it all started to go wrong…

At the next stop I got up to pay and slid my money into the machine. I put in a 1000 yen bill (about $10) figuring that it would spit out my change and I could be on my way. It spit out 1000 yen in coins. Hmmm…okay. I looked at the little electronic fare board and decided that since I got on at the beginning I would pay the largest amount it listed. Dropping in 250 yen, I asked the driver if this was the Kobama stop. He replied with several sentences of Japanese – none of which I understood. I tried again…pointing to the sign which was in Japanese and asked “Kobama?” More Japanese – but I gathered that this was not Kobama. Oh well…I had already paid and figured I could at least walk back to the last stop and walk along the beach because the book said I could take the road or walk on the sand (the road didn’t seem to lead to Kobama like the book said, and I figured it would be easiest to find a lighthouse by walking along the beach). After stopping to take a picture of the pretty countryside, I headed back to the other stop.

Weeeeelllll…the beach pretty much ended right past the other stop and became rocky coastline. I was supposed to walk for 10 minutes and see seaweed cultivators and what not. After noticing other people walking along the rocks, I decided that was legal and that I would try it. I figured that around the corner, there would be the path that the book mentioned. Nope…more rocks and then more beach and more rocks. I couldn’t decide if I was on the right track or not, but I walked for about 25 minutes along the rocks/beaches never seeing any seaweed cultivators. Since there were people around on the rocks and beaches, I wasn’t too worried about not being on the right track. The weird thing was that there was no roads or pathways down to any of these beaches…I know because I was intently looking for one so I could stop climbing rocks! So all of those people must have gotten there the same way - a nice “easy” climb over the rocks. Whatever…it was a beautiful day and I was feeling rather adventurous. Besides, I had my cell phone…not that I could have told anyone how to find me.

At several points it seemed I would have to turn around and go back, but there would always be some way to continue. Once there was a rope tied to the top of a hill and that helped me climb to the next section. Another time, I was having trouble and had to throw my backpack up so I could climb better. Still having trouble, I probably would have turned back, but I couldn’t reach my backpack so I had to get up there. It was all pretty comical!

After about an hour and a half of rock climbing and beach walking, I was getting pretty sick of it, but the alternative to forging ahead was going back across all those darn rocks…not a pleasant thought. Suddenly there was a little sign with an arrow. I have no idea what it said, but it cracked me up because it was so out of place in the middle of nowhere. Apparently it said that I was almost to some sort of civilization because after rounding that corner there was a little cove with houses and STAIRS up to a road!!! I was so happy, I had to stop and take a picture of my accomplishments.

The path led through a little town with some stereotypical Japanese houses…the kind I always imagined were everywhere in Japan. There were actual paths and roads, for which I was grateful, and after another half hour of walking through fields and woods, wondering if I was trespassing on private property, I came out into a clearing and saw the lighthouse. The view from up there was beautiful – well worth the climb!

So basically, I didn’t follow the path in the book at all, but I started and ended in the same place as they did. It was worth it, but after all of that, I’m kind of hoping that it is rainy next weekend so I can just stay home in my pjs. :)